Discovering Black Vermont

African American Farmers in Hinesburgh, 1790–1890

Elise A. Guyette

Publication Year: 2010

An impressive work of historical recovery, Discovering Black Vermont tells the story of three generations of free blacks trying to build a life and community in northern Vermont in the years following statehood. By piecing together fragments of the history of free blacks in Vermont--tax and estate records, journals, diaries, and the like--the author recovers what is essentially a lost world, establishing a framework for using primary sources to document a forgotten past. The book is an invaluable resource for those conducting local history research and will serve as inspiration for high school and college students and their teachers.

Cover

Title Page

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

More than a dozen years ago, I discovered that a black family, the Williamses,
had moved to South Burlington, Vermont, in 1865 and farmed
land not far from where I lived. Having studied the Vermont census
reports from 1790 to 1870, I knew that it was unusual for a family of
color to own farmland in Vermont at that time. Only 4 percent of black
farmers owned land, as compared to 32 percent for the total population....

Introduction

We drove slowly up the wooded dirt road, scattered with crumbling
stone walls and arthritic apple trees barely visible through the underbrush,
to what used to be called “the old Negro burying ground.” As
I studied the landscape, I became increasingly excited about exploring
the remnants of an older world that coexists with our contemporary
one. This isolated Vermont...

1 | Founding Mothers and Fathers of the Hill, 1790s–1800s

Shubael Clark paused his horse at the bottom of the Hill and studied
the 2,000-foot rise that was darkened by a canopy of old-growth beech
and maple trees, many six feet around, that prevented the sunshine from
reaching the forest floor.1 Mushrooms and mosses grew profusely in the
moisture that never leaves woodlands like this. He had ridden north
from Monkton to Hinesburgh on a well-used path; the mud was a foot...

2 | Peaks and Valleys on the Hill Farms, 1810s–1820s

From statehood to 1810, Vermont was the fastest-growing state in the
union, increasing from a population of 85,000 in 1791 to about 218,000.
Most migrants were farmers, and many, like the Clarks and Peterses,
made permanent homes in the Green Mountains. However, as the once thick
forest humus was burned, leached, and cropped off, the soil lost its
fertility, and farms became less productive. As a result, Vermont became...

3 | Life and Death on the Hill, 1830s–1840s

As the nineteenth century advanced, manufacturing in Hinesburgh flourished
and life gradually became easier for those who could afford to buy
the expanded services and products of the industrial age. In 1832, Rufus
Patrick started an iron foundry to manufacture agricultural tools, making
it unnecessary to travel the dozen miles south to Vergennes to purchase
such implements. In the 1840s, Clark Whitehorn added another...

4 | Prelude to War, 1850–1860

From statehood to 1850, Vermonters had experienced political, geographical,
religious and socioeconomic transformation. The old-growth
forest had almost completely disappeared, and larger dairy farms were
replacing mixed agricultural plots as milk products became important
to the state’s economy. Sizeable Greek revival homes graced the streets...

6 | The Post–Civil War Years

After the Civil War, an exhausted nation began the task of reconstructing
the destroyed South. Gaining suffrage for those recently freed
became a priority of both blacks and northern whites. Historian Mia
Bay claims that much of the Northerners1 eagerness for civil rights was
based on their desire for blacks to stay in the South and grow cotton for
Northern mills. Passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments...

Some Conclusions: Vulnerable Spaces

While scholarship on urban black communities and identities is ubiquitous,
rural areas have been so understudied that we cannot make generalizations
about them. This story adds not only to our knowledge of
rural black history but also to little-studied contacts between rural blacks
and whites.1 Through intimate stories of small places we can start to
understand real people, such as these Hill families, who often created...

Acknowledgments

This project could never have been accomplished without the dedicated
people who oversee archival materials, and I am indebted to them for
their help: Vermont town clerks: Olga M. Hallock and Heidi Racht of
Huntington, Melissa Ross and Cheryl Hubbard of Hinesburg, Helen
McKinlay of Pittsford, Carmelita Burritt of Monkton, and Deborah
Beckett of Williston. I am also indebted to the UVM Special Collections...

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